The Blackpool Highflyer

by Andrew Martin

  'The only blokes who might be called "spare" at Sowerby Bridge', Clive was saying when he swung himself back onto the footplate, 'would be the pilots.'

  Well that hit home, shut Billington up for at least two minutes.

  But then he bellowed out: 'Now you've got distant, outer home, and home signals to look out for!'

  'How far short of Malton are we?' I asked him.

  No answer.

  'It was shortly before Malton that a smash nearly happened,' I went on. 'I read of it in the paper.'

  'Kirkham Abbey's five mile short of Malton,' Billington yelled back, presently. 'But don't bother thissen about that, you've the fucking signal to look out for.'

  So we were in the danger zone. And I wasn't over-keen on the name Kirkham Abbey either - too like Kirkham in the rival county of Lancashire where Margaret Dyson had come to grief at my hands. I would not give it up yet.

  'But where was the tree on the line?' I shouted.

  However, Clive was at Billington's shoulder now. 'You can shut her off for a bit now, can't you?' Clive asked him; 'let her cruise through.'

  'What do you think this is?' said Billington. 'A bloody yacht?'

  Clive shook his head and sat down on the sandbox to read Pearson's Book of Fun. I carried on with the shovel, trying to fix the fire. With the sun right overhead it was very hot work.

  'Natty dresser, your mate!' roared Billington.

  I was trying not to look along the line, for I had no control over what might be placed there.

  'Shabbiness', I shouted back at Billington, 'is a false economy.'

  'Is it buggery,' said Billington. He had views on everything.

  We were now running up to Kirkham Abbey station, and we would have been touching seventy when I spied the distant signal through the scratchy spectacle glass. It was off.

  'Did you spot that?' shouted Billington.

  'Aye,' I said, and he seemed put out. I wished he would slow down. A distant signal, even when off, meant proceed with caution.

  'Now the "home" is the hardest spot on the whole bloody line,' Billington was saying. 'Half hidden in the bloody

  woods ... It controls the level crossing that's just around the bend here.'

  'All the more reason to slow down, then,' I muttered, shovelling coal. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if the distant was off then the home would be off too, and there'd be no trouble, but a cart stuck at that level crossing would put the kibosh on all right.

  We were really galloping now, and the damned wood seemed more of a forest, unwinding endlessly around the bend on the 'down' side, with no sign of the home signal. You could see very well how a branch might have fallen. There were so many of the buggers, after all.

  I was glad to see Clive put down the book and stand up.

  'I'll take her back now if it's quite all right,' he said to Billington.

  'What for?'

  'Well it's just that we've only got three ton of coal and the way you're going -'

  'It wants some knowing, this signal does,' Billington was saying, and the words seemed to be shaken out of him by the motion of the engine. He was refusing to give up the regulator.

  On the 'up' side was the ruined abbey. I caught a glimpse of white stone and white dresses against the bright green fields, a parked motorcar and some toffs standing within the broken walls, as if they were downhearted at having got there before it all collapsed.

  We were being shaken to buggery, running far too fast for this stretch. Billington should not have been at the regulator. I fancied that he was racing because he wanted me to miss seeing the signal. Then he could point it out and get the glory. We should have told him about the stone on the track the week before because it might have checked him, made him think us jinxed.

  I looked across at Clive, who was sitting on the sandbox. He would be going through hell at what Billington was doing to the engine, but he was back at the Pearson's Book of Fun.

  Billington was shouting to me: 'Signal's coming up your side. Got your eye out?'

  Clive looked up, and I thought he was going to say, 'She wants a brush on the brakes!' Instead he began to read aloud from the book: '"Why"', he shouted over the rattling of the engine, '"is a football round?'"

  'What?' I called out, because I couldn't credit this.

  Then three things happened: Billington yelled: 'Any second now!' Then he gave a cry of 'Bang off!' and there was the home signal for Kirkham Abbey, half hidden as promised. It was off so we were fine, but Clive was back at the regulator, Billington was tottering away towards my side, and we were slowing down. Clive hadn't exactly crowned him. There could have been nothing more than a shove, but it might have been the devil of violence, for I had never seen Clive riled before, or even move fast, come to that. Why, he must have risked crimping his trews, and Pearson's Book of Fun was left lying before the fire door. I put my shovel down, picked it up and brushed the coal dust off. I was going to return this to the kid, and I meant to return it clean.

  The book was mainly riddles and the solutions were at the back. I was so light-headed that I searched out a poser from the first pages. 'Why is a football round?' I said, as we went through Kirkham Abbey station at a speed moderate enough to let me see a puzzled look coming onto the face of the porter.

  At first Clive didn't answer, and I asked again, this time nodding to Billington - who was sulking like a camel behind me - to let him know that he might have a hazard too, but of course he wasn't game after what had gone on.

  'Because if it were square,' Clive shouted back, 'the players would be kicking too many corners!' He turned to me and grinned.

  When, not long after, we came up to the great signal gantry at Scarborough, which must have had fifty boards mounted on it, Billington spoke up for the first time since Kirkham Abbey: 'Work it out your bloody self,' he said.

  The tracks going under the gantry were a mass of X's, and I wished we could look up the answer at the back of Pearson's Book of Fun, but we picked our way by degrees to the right excursion platform, and Billington bolted as soon as we got in.

  But the queer thing was that so did my mate. No sooner had Billington scarpered than Clive was jumping down from the footplate, with the carpet bag in his hand, joining the steeplechase of excursionists racing down the platform for the ticket gates.

  'Sign off for us, will you?' he called back.

  I looked at the platform clock. It was nearly midday.

  'Who's to put the engine in the shed?' I shouted at him.

  'Thissen,' he said, with a big grin.

  'Won't we take a pint?' I called, feeling quite dismayed.

  'Sorry, Jim!' he called back. 'Got a bit of business in hand!' And he was off along the platform, but he turned after a few seconds, and with the excursionists flowing away on either side of him he called back once again: 'Scarborough and Whitby Brewery Company - South Shore.'

  'Shall I see you there?'

  He shook his head. 'The pale ale,' he said. 'It's the best thing out!'

  I opened the fire doors, put on a bit of blower, then I stepped down with Pearson's Book of Fun in my hand. There were about twenty excursion platforms in all at Scarborough. Three-quarters were taken, and the rakes of silent carriages were like empty streets, but streets standing under glass in a milky light. Reuben Booth was coming towards me along the empty platform, moving dockets from one hand to another, like a conjurer trying a card trick he can't remember. It was all luggage-in-advance business.

  As soon as he saw me he stopped and looked at the book. 'Pearson's Book of Fun: Mirth and Mystery, edited by Mr X,' he said slowly. 'Clive gave it to you then, did he?'

  'I mean to return it to the lad,' I said.

  'Right you are’ said Reuben, and he nodded to himself for quite a while. 'The boy's been left -'

  Here he stopped to wheeze for a time, and I thought for one crazy moment that he was about to say, 'He's been left a thousand pounds.' But no.

  '- orphan.'

  That word
again; the fairy-like woman proved right again. Why couldn't that old bitch take the kid in herself?

  'So it's Crossley Porter House for him then?' I said to Reuben.

  The Crossley and Porter Orphan Home looked over Savile Park in Halifax. It was a school with orphanage above. The orphans were looked after by matrons or masters who were all immense; the masters all had big beards, and the women would've if they could. Or maybe it was just that the orphans were so small. The orphans slept on the fifth floor; everybody in Halifax knew that. If you were left without parents, or even just fatherless, you would be climbing those stairs.

  Reuben looked down at his dockets.

  'And what's to happen to his dog?' I asked.

  'The dog?' said Reuben. 'That's at my place.'

  Reuben was a kindly, untidy fellow - just the sort to have dogs. He lived in a house on the edge of Halifax which you could see on the run down from the Joint to Sowerby Bridge. It was on its own hill: tall and thin in the middle of tall and thin trees, and looking liable to topple forwards into its own garden.

  'It won't be the first I've taken on,' he said.

  'No’ I said.

  'Folk put them in the van, label on the bloody collar: "Give water at Bradford", "Put off at Hebden Bridge", and I'll tell you what... half the time there's no bugger at Hebden Bridge to collect.'

  'Don't they give a name and address when they hand a dog over?'

  'I'll tell you summat else for nothing,' said Reuben sounding quite galvanised just for a moment, 'I've no notion of this beast's name.'

  'I'll ask the boy,' I said. 'I'll take him back the book, and I'll ask him. I could take him a bit of sweet stuff too ... Comfits,' I said, remembering George Ogden, 'only they don't like the hot.'

  'Farthing Everlasting Strip’ said Reuben, 'that's the thing for a lad. Mind you, they en't really everlasting -' He stopped here, and seemed to be thinking of something a million miles away before continuing:'- but they really do cost a farthing.' He was smiling, which I had never really seen Reuben do before, and all over a bit of toffee.

  I asked him if he'd have a drink with me, and he said he would, so we fixed up to meet in the station booking office after I'd disposed of the tank engine.

  I uncoupled it and ran it round to the Scarborough shed, where I signed my own name and Clive's. It was a sacking matter if discovered and reported, but you'd do it for a pal. Then again, you usually knew why you were doing it.

  They didn't have an engine men's mess at Scarborough shed. They had an engine men's 'lobby', which sounded fine, but in the washroom there was no soap: plenty of Jeyes smell and acres of white tile, but not a smidgen of yellow soap. I'd known country stations where they'd lay on a pail, but even in those spots there'd always be soap.

  When I met Reuben back at the station, he was looking at himself in the window of the booking office, a steady look with a tired sort of question in it.

  'Do you have any idea where Clive's off to?' I asked him, and it came out quite short, for I was still vexed over the soap.

  Reuben gave me one of his looks which meant he was getting ready to say nothing.

  'The fellow's been moving in narrow ways all day’ I said.

  Reuben was still looking in the window, but now sly, like. There was gold lacing on his coat and cap, but it meant nothing to him. His beard was like what's left of a thistle after the flower has gone.

  'There was no soap over yonder’ I said, 'so all I could do was take a piss.'

  'Aye,' said Reuben, looking away from the glass and towards me at last, 'well tha must do what tha can.'

  Where was Clive? And why had he not seemed put out by the smash or anything that had happened since? Why had he come out laughing from his interview with Major Harrison of the Board of Trade?

  I looked down at my grimy hands. Clive could not have put the grindstone on the line because he'd been with me since first thing that Whit Sunday morning, and the stone had been placed within the hour before we struck it.

  And anyway: why would he do it?

  Chapter Nine

  You'd have guessed the weather was set fair even under the

  glass of the excursion platforms, but when I stepped out of

  the station with Reuben I was startled at what I'd been

  missing: rows of glass charabancs waiting under the high,

  burning sun; the widest of clean blue skies somehow letting

  you know that the sea was at hand, though not for the present

  to be seen; and, across the road, the Westfield Hotel, fairly

  dazzling in its whiteness.

  When we were clear away from the shadow of the station,

  Reuben stood still for a while, nodding and saying over to

  himself, 'Gradely . .. gradely,' even though it was hardly the

  weather for old men in gold coats.

  We were now on the Valley Road leading down to the

  South Shore: Italian gardens, lily ponds, rock pools, bamboos

  and all vegetation out of the common; white ladies with the

  smaller sort of parasols in the miniature zigzagging roads,

  laughing at all these corners they were made to turn in order

  to get nowhere at all. But it didn't matter because whatever

  way they faced gave postcard views: the Valley Bridge connecting fun with more fun, the mighty Grand Hotel high on

  its own cliff - a cliff all to itself! - with its stone starfish and

  dolphins all around the roof. I'd been born just along the

  coast at Baytown, and the one telegraphic address I knew as a

  boy was that of the 'Grandotel Scarborough'. Many messages

  under that head, it was said, were sent out in code for they

  were starting wars, or finishing wars, and all that kind of

  carry on.

  The harbour, down below the hotel, was like a sort of circular village in the sea, and the beach was a creamy brown -

  sand,

  I mean - whereas at Baytown it was rocks, and the sight

  of anybody sitting on it was a sure sign a drink had been

  taken.

  We walked on, and the sound of a brass band floated up to

  us and expanded to fill the sky. If you could imagine a whole

  town saying, 'I am first class -1 am in the pink,' well, that was

  Scarborough in the summer.

  Reuben was next to me as we took it all in. At large in his

  guard's uniform, he looked like an old campaigner from

  some forgotten war, which to my mind he was, having had a

  hand in the building of the Settle-Carlisle line. I had read that

  the winds on the high viaducts there could stop a locomotive

  in its tracks.

  As we walked on, I fancied I could feel the heat of the sun

  and an extra heat on top - the coal dust burning on my skin. I

  took my coat off, but my shirt and my undershirt were like a

  further two coats, and these I could not take off. How Reuben

  was managing under his thick coat I could not imagine. The

  further we walked, the more my boots and my woollen

  trousers became my enemies, but we eventually struck the

  Scarborough and Whitby, the pub Clive had spoken of. As we

  walked towards the door, I noticed a torn scrap of a poster on

  its wall: '

  SEE MONSIEUR MAURICE

  ', it read, '

  THE VENTRILOQUIAL PARAGON AT THE FLORAL HALL, SCARBOROUGH'.

  The

  bloody man cropped up everywhere.

  Stepping into the Scarborough and Whitby, you saw the

  truth of the day: everybody's face was red. The sun had fairly

  exhausted them, or beaten them in a fight.

  'What's yours?' I asked Reuben.

  'Shilling of brandy,' he said, in a thoughtful sort of way.

  I took a glass of pale ale, as rec
ommended by Clive, while

  wishing he'd been on hand to take one with me. It was very

  hard to talk to Reuben, because everything he might have to

  say was buried so deep.

  'Clive's gone off,' I said again. 'Don't know where.'

  There was a bit of a question put into that, but Reuben said

  nothing.

  'Odd that he shouldn't let on’ I said.

  Reuben didn't seem to have heard this, but something

  must have progressed in him, for he said, nodding: 'It's a rum

  go-'

  Nothing was said for another short while. Then I had an

  idea: 'Reuben’ I said, 'why is a football round?'

  It was a quarter to one by the clock over the bar as I said

  this. At getting on for five to, Reuben said: 'Well

  ...

  it would

  have

  to be.'

  'But why?' I said, and I saw the daftness of the whole thing.

  The riddles in Pearson's didn't work without speed.

  Reuben had finished his brandy. 'Thinking on

  . . .'

  he said,

  '...

  I had two of these, last time I came here.'

  'Will you take another, Reuben?' I said.

  He shook his head. 'Just thinking, like.'

  'When were you last over here then?'

  'Nineteen hundred,' he said.

  I nodded, hoping he might continue, and he did after a little while.

  'Generally speaking,' he said, 'I'll only take one drink.'

  'But the last time you were in Scarborough, you had two?'

  He nodded. 'Aye.'

  We were back to square one. I bought another glass of pale

  ale and Reuben watched me drink it. There were so many

  questions I could have asked him that in the end I asked none

  at all.

  Reuben made his way back to the station when I'd finished

  my beer, and I walked out a minute later. It had been a mistake to have a second drink, as I learnt the minute I struck